University of Illinois history professor Harry Liebersohn has been chosen to receive the prestigious Humboldt Research Award honoring a career of research achievements.The Humboldt award is presented by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn,...
Black gay men were largely missing in both black and gay history, so Kevin Mumford, who specializes in both, set out to tell their story.
“I wanted to reclaim a history that had been washed over, that had been overlooked,” said Mumford, a University of Illinois...
When you think of a laboratory, you may think of test tubes, chemistry or some other kind of science. You might also think of teamwork, solving problems and testing solutions. Could there be such a lab for history?Some faculty and students at Illinois are working on one. It’s called...
Most historical accounts describe the Illinois Indians of the late 1600s as a weak and beleaguered people, shattered by war. Their Grand Village of the Kaskaskia, near present-day Starved Rock State Park, 80 miles southwest of Chicago, was depicted as little more than a refugee center, propped up...
Leslie Reagan is a well-respected professor of history who joined Illinois faculty in 1992. But this past Oct. 16, she was Leah Schwartz, an outspoken, disaffected factory worker from the year 1913 who makes button holes all day.She was a lively...
The British Empire was not the model of peace and stability, the “Pax Britannica,” as it’s often portrayed. The common narrative of the empire’s rise and fall is misleading, says a University of Illinois history professor.
Dissent...
Baseball was still a relatively young sport when roughly 20,000 people packed the small Oklahoma City stadium that was designed to hold less than 10,000. With the stands filled, a multitude lined the outfield foul lines, leading one reporter to wisecrack that “any guy ought to be able to pitch with...
All of Germany was riveted last year by a three-part television miniseries, Generation War—the story of five Germans swept up in the titanic upheaval of World War II. Roughly 7 million viewers tuned in for each episode, sparking national debate in a country that has been grappling with the...
Today we call it influence, clout, “who you know.” It gets junior into the top school, swings the big business deal, gets legislation passed or killed. When exposed, we say it’s unfair and corrupt, and we might even get the law involved. But in France of the 1700s it was the way of the world—at...
What was the black Confederate soldier's myth? Over 150 years after the Civil War, many websites, articles, and organizations still assert that between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans willingly served as soldiers in the Confederate army.
Patrick R. Cleburne, a...